Gold, silver, pgms, mining and geopolitical comment and news

Over the past few trading days something positive has been seen in the gold investment sector. The gold price has seen signs of just a little strength – even in the absence of Chinese physical demand with the markets closed there for the 7-day Autumn Golden Week holiday. While Chinese gold trade will not quite have been zero (there is ongoing retail demand over the period), there will have been no Shanghai Gold Exchange deliveries and imports will also have been negligible and gold price premiums have been falling as a result.

But despite this reduction in physical gold movement into the country, the gold price has been strong (relatively in relation to recent months) driven mostly be at least signs of a minor change in sentiment towards the yellow metal in the West. This is making short speculators nervous and retail demand in the West has been seeing signs of a change – in part triggered over the past few days by the very disappointing non-farm US payroll figures coming in well below expectations and suggesting to the markets that any Fed interest raising programme may have been yet further delayed……